While the American Hospital Association, comprised of nearly 5,000 member hospitals, health systems and other organizations, and nearly 43,000 individual members, supports identifying, assessing and determining the best available standards for interoperability. it is now asking the ONC to get more specific about what those "best practices" are.
"In the introduction to the draft 2016 Interoperability Standards Advisory, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT states that its goal is to provide clarity, consistency and predictability for the public regarding ONC's assessment of the best available standards," the AHA letter reads. "To support this goal, the advisory includes a framework that lists six general characteristics that collectively indicate why a standard is deemed to be the 'best available.' Given the intent to provide clarity for the public, the AHA urges ONC to provide greater detail about the characteristics and metrics used to assess the standards identified as the 'best available,' including information on the readiness for use by providers to successfully meet government requirements."
The AHA provides three specific recommendations:
• Increase detail about the characteristics and metrics used to identify best standards. The AHA would like the advisory to include attributes with insight on the deployment and utilization of standards, including real world examples.
• Readiness of standards for provider use should be included in the framework. The AHA would like the ONC to publish all available testing results, including those from authorized testing organizations that indicate how the standard supports use cases referenced in the advisory.
• Provide additional education about the best available standards to support successful use. The AHA would like the ONC to coordinate with other agencies to increase the educational support and resources available to providers on the new meaningful use regulatory standards as well as those included in the Interoperability Standards Advisory.